Hubstaff Review | How Good Is It At Employees Tracking?

Say goodbye to old school methods of time tracking with Hubstaff. It offers a myriad of benefits for your business which I will discuss in this article.

I learned that choosing the best employee time tracking software is critical to succeeding in business. Read this Hubstaff review to learn its features, pros and cons, benefits, and functions so as to make an informed decision.

Here is another tool that you can use to track your employees, Hubstaff.

Hubstaff Review: How Good Is It At Employees Tracking?

Small and large business owners have praised Hubstaff for being an affordable way to track time. Businesses in construction, eCommerce, cleaning industry, salon, startups use employee tracking systems to maximize their productivity. 

What is Hubstaff?

This is one of the easiest time tracking platform. It can run on your mobile phone as an app or desktop as software. It does much more than time tracking.

It enables you to create invoices, schedule shifts for your employees, GPS tracking, see work in progress with screenshots, get reports, just to name a few.

Hubstaff was created in 2012.  It was created when its co-founders were researching an effective way of managing their team of freelancers. It has 60 remote team members representing different countries. The company is located in the United States.

It is cloud-hosted, supports almost all operating systems such as Linux, Windows, Android plus Apple devices.  Hubstaff integrates with many other apps to increase its functionality. You can also compare it to the time tracking software I reviewed in my Veriato review.

The apps include Trello, Paypal, Asana, Jira, Github, and many more.

Hubstaff Pricing

Its pricing is affordable. All its plans have a free trial of 14 days. Also, it has a free plan which has few features such as time track, limited screenshots, tracking activity, and limited payments.

Then there is a basic plan that costs $7 dollars per month for a single user, Premium that costs $10 per month for a single user and Enterprise that costs $20 per month for a single user.

With a basic plan, you can track the activity and time of your employees, get unlimited screenshots but cannot track apps, URLs, there is no mobile GPS tracking, no sending of invoices nor staff scheduling.

Premium and enterprise plans have all the features needed to grow your business.

Employee Monitoring Features

With modern technology, companies can track nearly 100% of worker activities, time worked, and movement.

Employee monitoring features include:

• GPS tracking
• Time tracking
• Screenshots taking
• Activity level tracking
• Computer Screen Recording

Application and Website Monitoring

Which websites or app does your team visit?

Hubstaff shows apps and website activities of your employees. This monitoring software also shows the percentage of the time used on every application or website.

You can also have URL monitoring to track what your employees accessed during the day. If you click on the URLs, you’ll see their screenshots. With the app and website monitoring, you will be able to tell if your employee spends their working time well or not.

Screenshot Monitoring

This is a useful feature as it helps to access if your employees are working or engaging in personal activities during work hours.

With this feature, you can take your employees’ screenshots every 10 minutes. It also enables you to view the screen of your entire team member on one platform.

Before using this feature, notify your employees you will be getting screenshots of their screens frequently.

If they have sensitive information, you can blur the screenshots. The blur will not disclose page content but will help tell if your employees are active or not.

Activity Levels Tracking

Hubstaff monitors employees’ activities depending on the movement of the keyboard and mouse. If your employees’ activity levels range from 60 to 94%, they are on track.

However, if their activity levels are less than 60%, this shows that your employees are either distracted at work or are busy with something else.

You can see the activity level of your entire team at a glimpse on your dashboard and the number of people working on the project without going to the workstation.

With activity monitoring software like Hubstaff, you will spend less time supervising your employees and more time running your business.

Weekly Work Limit Tracking

Employee Location Tracking

Employee monitoring apps have grown in popularity because they bring numerous benefits to a company.  With this kind of tracking:

• you will be able to see the distanced traveled by your drivers
• Know whether your staff is where it is supposed to be
• You will be able to identify abnormal behavior of your staff
• Track the attendance of your employees
• You will be able to tell if your staff are clocking in on time

Hubstaff offers the same benefits. You will be able to manage your remote teams irrespective of the location they will be. You will know their location, team's time spent commuting from one place to the other, just to name a few.

Based on this information, you can tell the best time to communicate with your employees. There are guidelines you should follow before using software like Hubstaff.

Employees have a right to know that their activities are being monitored so you should explain your legitimate reason to track time and location. If it is possible, read the employee privacy policy in your area so as to understand the rights of your employees.

Project Status Tracking

This is one of the useful features of this software. Project managers can easily estimate the time taken to complete their specific projects and save time by checking how many hours each employee takes on a task.

Also, you will get detailed reports that show total hours worked in a day, time worked past 7 days plus their average activity. Use this information to know the status of your project status & progress.

Project Billing and Invoicing Features

Project billing and invoicing features automate invoicing for quick payments, link timesheets with automatic payroll to enable easier payments of salaries.

Timesheet Management

Timesheets are crucial tools for managers.  There are people who still use paper timesheets but are tiring and time-consuming. Online timesheets are much popular for checking and analyzing hours worked.

With Hubstaff’s online timesheets;

• You will be able to keep a record of time spent on tasks or specific projects
• Can integrate with payment solutions
• Managers can review and approve timesheets
• Managers can be able to tell productive and unproductive employees
• It is easy to give time off
• The data will be used in client billing plus payroll processing

A business can only achieve success and meet its deadline and budget when it manages its time properly. Time tracking is therefore essential to any business that wants to grow.

Payroll Management

Hubstaff has an automated online payroll software that will sync with your timesheets to easily pay your employees. The payroll software will calculate payments for time worked.

You can also link with payment systems such as PayPal in order to transfer payments directly to your employees.

Payroll management is a critical function for every business. Employees must be paid on time and accurately to avoid problems associated with paying late.

With Hubstaff, it will help you generate accurate payments, automate payment reports, work out payroll calculations and deductions, store important data such as payslips,  just to name a few. 

Invoice Management

Manage your invoices efficiently with Hubstaff.  Invoice management is a headache for some businesses. They are always overwhelmed by the high number of invoices they receive every day.

Manually processing such volumes of invoices daily is tiresome and time-consuming.  With Hubstaff;

• It automates invoicing and this results in quick payments
• You can monitor invoice statuses in one platform
• Record payments for your invoices
• You can monitor billable time
• Generate invoice in seconds

In order to use the invoicing tool that is provided by Hubstaff, you need to add clients to your organization. When you open your dashboard, you will see an invoices tab on the left sidebar.

Use this tab to manage your invoices, add organizational details, etc.

Additional Features

Hubstaff is continuously improving its features to help businesses grow and accomplish more.

Apart from taking screenshots, tracking time and location, creating online timesheets, project budgeting, detailed reporting, employee scheduling, other additional Hubstaff features that you will find useful include customized employee settings and client access to project status & progress.  

Customized Employee Settings

Sometimes it can be hard to learn a new tool. Don’t worry because Hubstaff has a simple guide that will provide you with all the information needed to set up and use it.

There is also info on how to customize employee settings in case you need help with this.

It is possible to change settings for individual team members with Hubstaff. The features that you can change include weekly limits, activity level, and screenshot frequency, just to name a few.

Client Access to Project Progress

Client access to project progress feature is available in the premium and enterprise plan.

You can set up a client account (under the Project viewer) to enable them to view reports for any project they are added on. Simply enter their email, set their roles within the organization, and choose individual projects to add them to. The project viewer account is free.

 However, they are not allowed to track time or change settings.

Hubstaff has its own project management tool, but it also integrates with other popular project management tools.

Cross-Platform Features

Hubstaff integrates easily with some of my favorite apps like Trello, Github, Asana, Paypal, and Jira to keep my business running smoothly.

You can access it on any device and supports the following operating systems:  iOS, Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, chrome. It has a mobile app and a desktop application.

It has all the features to improve employee productivity. However, certain functions will only work on specific operating systems, devices, or browsers.

1. Desktop Application

The Hubstaff desktop application supports the following operating systems; windows, android, mac, Linux, and iOS apps.

To get Hubstaff client, go to their official website, where you will get the link to download the desktop application. You can install their software on multiple computers.

 If you experience any problems while downloading their tool, they have an excellent support staff that is ready to answer your questions.

2. Hubstaff Mobile App

The mobile application enables you to have a more flexible workforce. It allows your workforce to clock in and out wherever they are.

The Hubstaff location tracking feature enables your company to see the exact location of your remote employees. With automatic updates, it guarantees you are always running the most recent version.

However, the mobile application is only available in its premium and enterprise plan. Here is what you should consider when using their app;

• Remember to switch to cellular data when Wi-Fi is not available
• Enable track locations
• Screenshot capture is not supported

Setting up Hubstaff

Setting up Hubstaff is easy. You need to sign up for an account in order to access the tool.

• You can start with their free 14-day trial. Visit their official website to access the sign-up form
• Fill the required details such as team name, email address, and password
• Create a new organization if you are a manager or a business owner. Or click join an existing project or organization if you are a worker.
• The next step is choosing your industry.  This will help Hubstaff to customize your account.
• Choose your goals or functions that you want. They include tracking time, making payroll easy, tracking the profitability of certain projects, generating invoices, scheduling shifts, approving timesheets, etc.
• Next step is adding a project
• Choose a pricing plan that is suitable for you. There is a basic plan that costs $7 a month for 1 user, Premium that costs $10 dollars per month for 1 user and Enterprise that costs $20 per month for 1 user.
• Invite your team and you are ready to go.

Hubstaff Pricing

Like I mentioned before, Hubstaff is a renowned affordable solution for tracking employee’s time.

It offers a 14-day trial in all its plans which allows you to access its full functions. It offers one free plan for one user but has limited features and functionality.

If you opt for a subscription plan, the provider has flexible plans which serve both small and large businesses.

Hubstaff is an amazing time tracking solution with all the characteristics that I need for my agency. I recommend it to any business owner dealing with remote teams.

Before deciding on the ideal plan for your company, compare all the plans to see if they have the right functions to cater to your business needs.

What about Employee Privacy?

Employees have a right to privacy in their workplace.  Hubstaff have complied with employee privacy policy by monitoring workplace-related tasks only.

Employees are not monitored when running their personal errands such as going to bathroom or when visiting personal sites such as banks.

This is because they have control over the tool and can choose when they want to be tracked and when they don’t want.  Information such as sites or app visited, activity level, time worked is accessed only when using Hubstaff.

All information is stored in the cloud and is accessible by admin.

Does Hubstaff Record Keystrokes?

Hubstaff does not store or record keystrokes. Instead, it simply checks activity levels of keyboard and mouse. It has an impressive activity-tracking feature that captures how often your employees are moving their mouse or typing on the keyboard.

There are numerous activity checking solutions available in the market today, but only Hubstaff seems effective to me so far.

It will show active and inactive individual users depending on their mouse movement and keyboard strokes.

You will get an insight into your teams’ time and productivity and whether they are concentrating on essential tasks or not.

Hubstaff Limitations and the Alternative

Hubstaff is an affordable time and location tracking solution, with great and important features that are beneficial for your company. Just like any other app, it has its limitations.

It will mark you idle when having video conferencing calls since mouse and keyboard activity will be less. This is a major setback for employees that have regular meetings with video calls.  It is easy to solve this problem. Explain to your manager that the inactivity was caused by video calls.

Hubstaff alternatives include TimeCamp, VeriClock, BillQuick, Clevork, Teramind, just to name a few. They are all time tracking software suitable for companies with remote employees and freelancers.

Tracking Tasks

Tired of manual timekeeping with spreadsheets or excel? Use a time tracking software like Hubstaff. Also, Hubstaff tracks tasks and locations of your workforce using the GPS tracking.

Managers can have a bird’s eye view for every project they are working on and keep team members focused on important tasks. Moreover, get regular updates by setting up prompts that show the progress of a project.

Assess projects and determine which ones are most profitable, let your business grow by focusing your workforce on tasks that deliver and help you gain leverage over your competitors.

Distraction Management

There are too many distractions at work these days such as social media, office gossip, the internet, and many more. Don't be surprised if you find employees' browsing through the internet, some might be idle or just too drained to focus on work.

However, with a time tracking tool such as Hubstaff, it is easy to distinguish an idle and inactive worker.

When employees are working, you can reduce their distraction by tracking their time and activity with a screen capturing software like Hubstaff.

Poor Time Use Report

A poor time use report shows how your workforce has been spending their time.

Additionally, it will help managers to identify unproductive habits adopted by employees and help come up with measures to prevent poor time usage. This will help you and your teams become more efficient and organized.

Hubstaff time tracking tool allows managers to know not only what employees are doing, but also where they are and if they are working on the right project.

Late or Absent Report

By keep track of attendance, companies can determine which employees arrive early, on time or late. Late or absent reporting helps in determining which employees are good match for the company.

You can access the late or absent report through filtering the attendance report by the member or through their attendance status such as;

• Not started – users’ shift has not started.
• On-time - the user logged in to their shift on time.
• Late – the user arrived late, after the 5 minutes notification.
• Abandoned – the user failed to complete their shift.
• Missed – the user was absent for their entire shift.